Contents

Story

The story begins with a large quantity of robots suddenly appearing in places where peace has reigned supreme thanks to Sonic's frequent actions, and laying waste to everything. Tails suspects that Dr. Ivo "Eggman" Robotnik is behind this, but cannot figure out where all the robots are coming from. It is then that Tails receives an emergency message from Espio. In this message is a video showing that Eggman is dispatching his large quantities of robots from a giant orbital space fortress: the Death Egg II.[2]

Sonic decides to get to Death Egg II alone using a single-seat space rocket called the "Lunar Fox" that Tails invented. However, in order for the Lunar Fox to fly, eight Chaos Emeralds has to be inserted into it to act as a power supply. Meanwhile, Sonic's friends, who are spread throughout the world, are guarding the Chaos Emeralds separately so that they are not misused by Eggman (one of them ended up being stolen by Fang in the meantime, however).[2]

On their first stop to get the Chaos Emeralds, Sonic and Tails flies over to where Knuckles is. However, Knuckles begins provoking Sonic after hearing what was going on by stating that if the Lunar Fox is a single-seater, then only the toughest among them should go. When Sonic, who believes that he is the strongest, accepts Knuckles's challenge and gets ready to fight him though, Tails forces his way in-between the two. Tails then proposes fighting fair and square in the ring, and the one who wins against all of those holding the Chaos Emeralds will ride the Lunar Fox.[2]

One of the fighters eventually made it to the end of the tournament. There, Eggman appears and creates a clone of the fighter to defeat them with. However, the fighter is able to defeat their clone and head to the Death Egg II in the Lunar Fox.

After arriving at the Death Egg II, the fighter gets a surprise visit from Metal Sonic. After defeating him, the Death Egg II begins to fall apart as Dr. Eggman, in his E-Mech suit, challenges the victor. Unlike other battles in the game, the player only gets one shot to take down Eggman and also has fifteen seconds to defeat him. Using the Chaos Emeralds' power, the fighter defeats Dr. Eggman. The victor subsequently escapes the Death Egg II in the Lunar Fox before it explodes. However, the post credits scene shows Eggman and Metal Sonic also escaped the explosion and head back to the planet.

Hacked characters

Arenas

Development

Masahiro Sugiyama, a character designer at AM2, added Sonic and Tails into the fighting game Fighting Vipers as a way to cure his boredom. Yu Suzuki saw this and decided to present the idea of a 3DSonic fighting game to Hiroshi Kataoka. Suzuki then presented the idea to Yuji Naka.[3] At first, Kataoka was worried because of the concept of Sonic characters beating each other up, and feared Yuji Naka would not approve. However, Naka was actually very receptive to the concept, commenting, "I couldn't think of Sonic as a fighting game and was worried whether he could really fight with his short hands and big head. But Mr. Yu encouraged me."[4] At that point nobody had yet attempted to present Sonic in 3D, so Sonic the Fighters was Sonic's 3D debut and had Naka's full support. Developers were worried about rendering Sonic in 3D at first, so Naka gave the team a Sonic figure to work off of. The game was released in Japanese arcades in May 1996, running on Sega Model 2 hardware.[5]

Sega Saturn version

There was a planned Sega Saturn version to the game advertised in various gaming magazines, but was quietly cancelled. No explaination has ever been offered for the port's cancellation.

Adaptations

While an adaptation of Sonic the Fighters was not made for this, Bark and Bean were introduced into the Sonic the Hedgehog comic series published by Archie Comics starting with Sonic the Hedgehog #160 and were later revealed to have participated in underground fighting tournaments. However, an official Sonic the Fighters adaptation was eventually made, covering Sonic the Hedgehog #268-#271 as a part of the "Champions" story arc. This adaption introduced Honey into the comics along with Breezie the Hedgehog. However, this story only involved one Chaos Emerald.

Achievements/Trophies

These are the achievements and trophies for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 versions of Sonic the Fighters.

Badge

Name

Requirement

Trophy Class

Xbox Live Gamescore

Stage 1 Complete

Complete Stage 1 of Arcade Mode (any difficulty).

Bronze

20

Stage 2 Complete

Complete Stage 2 of Arcade Mode (any difficulty).

Bronze

20

Stage 3 Complete

Complete Stage 3 of Arcade Mode (any difficulty).

Bronze

20

Stage 4 Complete

Complete Stage 4 of Arcade Mode (any difficulty).

Bronze

20

Stage 5 Complete

Complete Stage 5 of Arcade Mode (any difficulty).

Bronze

20

Stage 6 Complete

Complete Stage 6 of Arcade Mode (any difficulty).

Bronze

20

Stage 7 Complete

Complete Stage 7 of Arcade Mode (any difficulty).

Bronze

40

Perfect

Win a round without receiving any damage in Arcade Mode (any difficulty).

Gold

60

Barrier Destroyer

Destroy all of an opponent's barriers while playing Arcade Mode or Offline Versus.

Silver

40

A Small Transformation

Turn small by being attacked (ie, by Amy's Magical Hammer, etc) in Arcade Mode or Offline Versus.

Silver

40

Honey the Cat

Use Honey the Cat in Arcade Mode or Offline Versus (Press START button on Amy and select).

Trivia

A special theme plays when Sonic and Knuckles fight each other in Versus mode.

Although the game did receive a western arcade cabinet release, it had very minimal distribution across the United States, leaving very few arcades to actually receive the game. The Palisades Center Ice Rink at the Palisades Center in West Nyack, New York was known to have the game since its opening in 1998 until it was replaced with Area 51 in late 2013.

Amy's muzzle and arms are apricot in all her promo and pre-rendered pictures, but white on her playable character, due to color limitations. The HD release changes the playable character's muzzle back to apricot.

However, there is a glitch in the HD release where winning a match as Honey makes Amy's muzzle turn white again.

Honey the Cat was a character who was going to be in the final game, but scrapped for unknown reasons. Before the 2012 re-release of Sonic the Fighters, she was only playable through hacking the Arcade version.

There is an otherwise unused song in the game's sound test called Sunset Town. There is no stage with this name in the game as released.

Robotonic, in game intro.

In the English version, Dr. Robotnik's name was misspelled Robotonic in the game's intro. However, in the final battle the character is named Dr. Eggman, and his Vs. Card reads "Dr. Eggman" with "Robotnik" written underneath.

Eight Chaos Emeralds appear in this game, whereas the majority of other games in the series include only seven.

The only way to play as Super Sonic is to reach the 2nd round against Metal Sonic without losing a single round.

In the Dreamcast game, Shenmue, characters from this game appear as collectible capsule figurines (based upon the promotional renders) that Ryo, the main character of the game, can buy from a dispenser. Figurines of Super Sonic and Metal Sonic can be won in a lottery.

Interestingly enough, in Shenmue, if one were to rotate the Fang figurine where he is standing on both feet, his right hand appears to erroneously have five fingers while his left hand has the correct four digits.

A Sonic the Fighters arcade machine appears in the beginning of the Disney film, Wreck-It Ralph. This is incongruent with the actual Western Arcade Cabinet release however, where it was retitled Sonic Championship.

The character Bean the Dynamite was inspired by Bin and Pin, the stars of the Sega arcade game Dynamite Dux. It was later revealed that Bean is in fact Bin's son.